Never predict...
In the area of Alaska where the burn was to take place, all these factors gave the
scientists and fire professionals a very narrow window of opportunity—just a
few weeks in July. Before that, it would be too wet; after, too dry. After more
than a decade of planning, the scientists had failed to get the right
prescription for two summers in a row. So when I asked permission for NOVA to
film the burn, they said yes, but they warned me again and again that they
couldn't predict whether or not it would happen this year. "Well, what's your
best guess?" I asked. No answers.

Even after the order was given to proceed and the burn got underway, things
remained unpredictable. On one day, for example, they needed to do aerial
ignition, starting the fire from a helicopter. The plan was to use so-called
"ping pong balls" of potassium permanganate, which is used as an oxidizer; as
they leave the helicopter, the balls are injected with a chemical that ignites
them as they fall.

The vegetation in that area of the watershed was too wet, however, and the
flames kept going out. So the ignition team flew the helicopter back to base,
unstrapped the ping pong machine and hooked on a helitorch, a kind of giant
flamethrower that spits out burning, jellied gasoline and gives a much
stronger ignition. The helitorch malfunctioned. It was back to base to get
another helitorch, which worked.

By then it was late afternoon. If we had been in the mid-latitudes, Dash and
company would have had to shut down for the day, as the sun would have soon
vanished below the horizon, and the relative humidity would have started to
rise out of prescription. In the land of the midnight sun, however,
particularly in July close to the solstice, the sun never really sets. So the
burn could still go forward—and, fortunately for us and for the 65
scientists waiting to gather research data during the burn, it did.

Swaddled in smoke, USDA Forest Service Research's David
Sandberg, one of the principal investigators for Frostfire, clambers up a crag for a
shot of the surrounding forest.

...always prepare
It was an early and helpful lesson for us, the filmmakers: So much can go wrong
in a fire that only the foolish would make predictions. Preparation, alertness,
and flexibility are key for the firefighters. After Frostfire, we realized that
this was the way we would need to approach all our shoots.

We prepared. The first and most important preparation was putting together a
"red-carded crew." Our film crew—director of photography Jon Else, soundman
John Haptas, and assistant cameraman Lincoln Else—took the full wildland
firefighting course with other rookie firefighters. It was a week's work in
classes ending with a fitness test. Called the "pack test," it proved they
could walk three miles wearing heavy fire boots and carrying a pack weighing 45
pounds in under 45 minutes. Haptas turned in the fastest walk of his class, and
they all were certified to fight fires. This gave the fire managers confidence
that they could trust the NOVA team in the dangerous situations we needed to
film for "Fire Wars." And it enabled us to get close enough to the fires that
we could feel the heat of the flames on our skin and get singed by flying
embers.

More preparation: We got the right gear, starting with the wildland
firefighter's characteristic green pants and yellow shirt made out of Nomex,
the trade name for a widely used, fire-resistant synthetic fabric. Helmets,
goggles, leather gloves, and proper firefighting boots (all leather, six inches
above the ankle). A regulation fireshelter pack to hang on our belts, to
protect us if we got caught in a fire.

Finally, we bought ourselves all-cotton or all-wool socks and underwear, as we
were instructed to do. For people who have never fought fire, the idea of being
told what to wear for underwear may seem loony, but there is a good reason: A
fire's heat could fuse the plastic in cotton/lycra clothes to your body, a
deeply unpleasant thought. Finding no-lycra socks was hard; finding no-lycra,
no-underwire bras almost impossible. Salespeople looked at me as if I had some
weird fetish or phobia.

Firefighters set
this 2,000-acre backfire in a failed attempt to stop the Clear Creek fire, a
blaze in the summer of 2000 that eventually consumed 208,000 acres.

Breaking the rule
With all this preparation, however, there was one thing we couldn't be sure of—the fire season. We had to make the prediction that no one else would. We had
to guess at the upcoming fire season's weather, and we knew that, on public
television budgets, we couldn't afford to guess wrong.

At the start of the year 2000, director Kirk Wolfinger and I put ourselves out
on the line with NOVA's executive producer, Paula Apsell. "This is the season
to film," we told her. "There have been two La Niña winters in a row,
unusually dry seasons that have left the forests out West even more flammable.
It's going to be a big season, with lots of fires."

We could have been totally wrong.

We weren't. The year 2000 season of fire was enormous, with some six million
acres burning. And as Arrowhead Hotshot Matt Snider says in the film, it made a
summer full of magical memories that we could share with our viewers in "Fire
Wars."

Judith Vecchione is an executive producer and producer in WGBH's National
Productions Department, with credits that range from "Vietnam: A Television
History" and "Eyes on the Prize" to "The CHINA Trilogy" and "Eleanor
Roosevelt." Since beginning the "Fire Wars" project four years ago, she has
become what advisor Stephen Pyne calls a "pyro-mantic," amassing a small
collection of antique Smokey Bear pins, bookmarks, and mugs. Like Robert Frost,
she says, "I hold with those who favor fire."